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Laptop manufacturers are really taking the piss with their webcams aren't they? It's 2018 and this potato quality just isn't acceptable on a $2000+ machine. If it was a $600 USD $400 basic student laptop, sure, but not on high end laptops.

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Laptop manufacturers are really taking the piss with their webcams aren't they? It's 2018 and this potato quality just isn't acceptable on a $2000+ machine. If it was a $600 basic student laptop, sure, but not on high end laptops

I think is 100% acceptable what are you doing skyping your mom once a year theres no need for an expensive webcam on laptops anymore better build quality and parts over an expensiv webcam

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Laptop manufacturers are really taking the piss with their webcams aren't they? It's 2018 and this potato quality just isn't acceptable on a $2000+ machine. If it was a $600 basic student laptop, sure, but not on high end laptops.

Kindof looks like the same censor ASUS used for my Vivobook 15. Like where are these manufacturers getting these parts? Along with those stupid 1366x768 displays, you'll probably have to dig deep into warehouses in Shenzhen to even find parts of this low spec anymore.

Isn't it funny how Chinese manufacturers seem to be pushing the boundaries when it comes to displays for the masses while your well known ASUSs, Lenovos, HPs, Dells, are still pushing out the same crap that would've been revolutionary... in 2006.

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I think is 100% acceptable what are you doing skyping your mom once a year theres no need for an expensive webcam on laptops anymore better build quality and parts over an expensiv webcam

If it was an Apple product, there would be a angry mob right outside their Cupertino offices. This is unacceptable for a premium and in all likelihood, ASUS's flagship product with a 2000 dollar price tag. No one is expecting DSLR quality, but at least have something that is on par with selfie cameras you find on mid-tier phones today. That camera ASUS is using has the quality of a feature phone from 2008. As much as I like my Vivobook 15, the webcam was just unacceptable. It literally wouldn't have costed a penny more to find a better camera to put in that hole.

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I think is 100% acceptable what are you doing skyping your mom once a year theres no need for an expensive webcam on laptops anymore better build quality and parts over an expensiv webcam

Lots of people are streaming on twitch these days, and you could easily stream IRL content or games like LoL/Dota on twitch with a decent 'gaming' laptop. For example Dennis streams his cooking and LoL streams from his Razer Blade(?).

If we're talking specifically about this laptop, then with its i9 processor and $2300 price tag it's likely aimed at professional/work use as well, so video conference calls are also something to consider.

It doesn't have to be 4k RED quality camera, just something that doesn't look like the lens has been smeared with vaseline... Honestly, I have no idea how all that vaseline got on my laptop...

There's no reason why you can't have a decent quality webcam in a high end laptop and have decent build quality. The cost between a potato webcam and a decent quality one will be at most a few dollars. On a $2300+ system this isn't going to make a huge dent. As I mentioned earlier, it would be a different story if it was a budget $600 laptop designed for school students or something. In those situations when you are building a budget laptop then sure, skimp on the webcam and for the most part the basic one will be fine for users in that price range... But on a high end $2300 laptop? Unacceptable.

I can understand if you personally don't make use of your webcam and don't necessarily put a lot of value on it as something for yourself, but that doesn't mean there aren't other people out there who do want to use the built in webcam in their laptop for a variety of reasons, and for those people this level of webcam quality, on a high end system, is extremely poor.

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It's 480P, no matter what you are doing that is unacceptable. My cheap dell laptop had a 720P webcam over 10 years ago and there has been no progression past that! Like how hard would it be to include a simple 1080P webcam in 2018?

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It's 480P, no matter what you are doing that is unacceptable. My cheap dell laptop had a 720P webcam over 10 years ago and there has been no progression past that! Like how hard would it be to include a simple 1080P webcam in 2018?

It's 480p? Holy hell! I assumed it was at least 720p but just a rubbish sensor.

What's the screen resolution on the touch screen in the track pad? I bet the resolution on that touch screen is higher than the resolution the webcam captures.

Imagine if Skype for example made an app for the touch screen that displayed your webcam preview image in the touch screen section and left the primary screen for the other person(s) in the call. The resolution of the webcam would be so bad that it would still look like it was taken with a potato when previewed on that tiny touch screen. Imagine then stretching that 480p webcam image to its 4k display. Yikes.

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It's 480P, no matter what you are doing that is unacceptable. My cheap dell laptop had a 720P webcam over 10 years ago and there has been no progression past that! Like how hard would it be to include a simple 1080P webcam in 2018?

The question should be. How much harder did ASUS have to work to hunt down a 480P camera in 2018? You probably have better luck looking in scrap yards than finding a factory that produces them new. Oh and please get Linus to rant about 1366x768 displays. The public needs to know this. I'm pretty sure your cheap Dell laptop also had one.

Just a list of my personal scores for some products, in no particular order, with brief comments. I just got the idea to do them so they aren't many for now

Don't take these as complete reviews or final truths - they are just my personal impressions on products I may or may not have used, summed up in a couple of sentences and a rough score. All scores take into account the unit's price and time of release, heavily so, therefore don't expect absolute performance to be reflected here.

-Lenovo Thinkpad X220 - [8/10]

Spoiler

A durable and reliable machine that is relatively lightweight, has all the hardware it needs to never feel sluggish and has a great IPS matte screen. Downsides are mostly due to its age, most notably the screen resolution of 1366x768 and usb 2.0 ports.

-Apple Macbook (2015) - [Garbage -/10]

Spoiler

From my perspective, this product has no redeeming factors given its price and the competition. It is underpowered, overpriced, impractical due to its single port and is made redundant even by Apple's own iPad pro line.

-OnePlus X - [7/10]

Spoiler

A good phone for the price. It does everything I (and most people) need without being sluggish and has no particularly bad flaws. The lack of recent software updates and relatively barebones feature kit (most notably the lack of 5GHz wifi, biometric sensors and backlight for the capacitive buttons) prevent it from being exceptional.

-Microsoft Surface Book 2 - [Garbage - -/10]

Spoiler

Overpriced and rushed, offers nothing notable compared to the competition, doesn't come with an adequate charger despite the premium price. Worse than the Macbook for not even offering the small plus sides of having macOS. Buy a Razer Blade if you want high performance in a (relatively) light package.

-Intel Core i7 2600/k - [9/10]

Spoiler

Quite possibly Intel's best product launch ever. It had all the bleeding edge features of the time, it came with a very significant performance improvement over its predecessor and it had a soldered heatspreader, allowing for efficient cooling and great overclocking. Even the "locked" version could be overclocked through the multiplier within (quite reasonable) limits.

-Apple iPad Pro - [5/10]

Spoiler

A pretty good product, sunk by its price (plus the extra cost of the physical keyboard and the pencil). Buy it if you don't mind the Apple tax and are looking for a very light office machine with an excellent digitizer. Particularly good for rich students. Bad for cheap tinkerers like myself.

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So we know it's a terrible buy with an i9, but Linus should have expected that given how thin it is. I'd like to see to a review of the i7-8750H or i5-8300H model. They seem like a more appropriate pairing for a 1050 Ti, anyways.

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Ah yeah sorry, I was thinking budget laptop prices here in Aus and forgot to convert currency to USD. Would be referring to the ~$400-$450 USD priced laptops. Something like an Acer Aspire 3 is the sort of thing I had in mind.

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From Asus direct it's 2299 USD, and given that I wouldn't buy it for that much $3500 is pretty out of the question

I tried to check on Asus’s Eshop in the US and couldn’t even find it. And on the normal website, there is no price. Where did you find it?

I’m looking at a version with a FHD display, 512go ssd and a 1050 instead of the 1050ti at about 1500€. I feel like this computer has a lot of features that I can’t find elsewhere even for more expensive.

it looks good enough to fit anywhere, I could do my engineering CAD (at least the light stuff) and maybe play couple hours on the week-ends...

if you guys have any other laptop to advise me, I’d be very thankful ;-)

btw, I always use my MX master mouse, so the pad thing is definitely a plus!

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if you guys have any other laptop to advise me, I’d be very thankful ;-)

Dell XPS 15. Keyboard, build quality and temps are a whole lot better. The biggest reason I can't recommend the Zenbook pro are the touch temps, there is no point in a portable laptop if you can't use it on your lap.